Topic: The consensus dead end. - page 4. (Read 1433 times)

If miners or anyone else for that matter run a different software that has different consensus rules and mine blocks that are incompatible with the majority then they will be on a separate chain (ie. an altcoin). Someone who is running a bitcoin client doesn't have to do anything because they won't receive such transactions since they will be rejected behind the scene right away for being invalid.

You are of course right, the usage of the word in this thread is a bit ambiguous/imprecise, mixing the "colloquial" with the "technical" meaning, but I think nevertheless the discussion here has to do with consensus.

The "global state" of the blockchain can be altered only following the strict rules of the Bitcoin protocol. Even if I don't double spend a coin and follow other basic rules of the Nakamoto consensus, I cannot simply come up with a new transaction format or use another hashing algorithm. I have to respect these rules and formats, and only then my messages (i.e. transactions) will be taken into account by the algorithm, and resolved according to the Nakamoto consensus.

Thus, hard and soft forks change not necessarily the general principle of the Nakamoto consensus, but other rules that are part of the Bitcoin protocol, which determinate the global state of the blockchain. Hard forks could in theory even change the general Nakamoto consensus principle, e.g. like Ethereum planned the transistion to Proof-of-stake. (Not that I think that would ever happen in Bitcoin.)

But maybe here we shouldn't talk about "the consensus" but about "protocol rules" or "consensus rules", or "how consensus rules are established".

It is a misconception to assume it was the decision of the miners (or the developers). When miners switch to a software update that is not fully compatible with respect to consensus rules, they think they can afford to do so because they expect they will still be able to sell the mining rewards. So people who criticize consensus rule changes should ask themselves whether they made sure they did not buy Bitcoins that came from these miners initially. If they did, they should admit that they actually paid for the consensus changes they criticize...

You want me to be out of consensus, and be part of that small minority that no one went into consensus with? No one will follow the big blocker agenda, for better or worse, right or wrong. The community simply doesn’t believe, and will never come into consensus that Bitcoin Cash is “the Bitcoin”, or that Bitcoin and Bcash “bilaterally split”.

The only person you’re in consesus with, with that post, is yourself. You believe you are right, but the community has moved on and it’s continuing on with the chain. You are an orphaned block insisting that the chain should be mined on top of you.

I swear, there is no facepalm gif large enough to express how utterly gormless you are. 

As always, you're the one who needs to learn to read.  Here is a larger font to assist you:


It doesn't matter if the only thing you care about is a particular feature activation that was being decided upon.  That's not the only reason you can be forked off.  How many more times do you need it to be said?  Most 5 year olds would have understood it by now.  The other network rules don't disappear just because you're looking at a certain possible rule change.  Why do you still think it's like an election where people can only pick from the preset outcomes on the ballot and we have to wait for a set date and time for the result?  You have seen with your own eyes that's not how it works. 

How can you possibly believe a proposed feature in the process of being decided upon would somehow magically grant immunity to being removed from the network for other reasons?  If a feature is being debated and a miner happens to start publishing invalid blocks at the time, do you think that miner stays on the network just because the feature hasn't activated yet?  Of course they don't.  Features don't change that.  You cannot argue that point and expect people to take you seriously.  THINK before you click reply.  If the network introduces a rule that bit 6 and bit 8 get disconnected, your precious feature activation does not factor into the equation.  Anyone flagging bit 6 and bit 8 goes bye-bye.  It's done.  History.  Accept the facts.  This is how it is.  "BEFORE ACTIVATION" is irrelevant.  Meaningless.  Not connected in any way, shape or form.  Other network rules exist as well and cannot be ignored.

*waits for franky1 to cry "bEfOrE aCtIvAtIoN" yet again because he can't comprehend*

That's some brilliant franky1 logic right there, heh.  You want to maintain that nothing changed but at the same time people got forked off?  Which is it?  If nothing changed, how did anyone get forked off?  No doubt that's yet another question you'll completely avoid so you can just repeat the same things you've already said another dozen times.    




There's that famous "should" again.  Where you think you get to set the terms and decide how it works.  Engage in wishful thinking all you like.  It doesn't work like that, though.  If enough people agree, that's sufficient.  If you think the rest of us need your permission to do something, you don't understand Bitcoin.
 It's as simple as that.  I'm not explaining how I think it should work.  I'm perfectly happy with how it does work.  Remember, you're the one who wants it changed.  You want us to bow to your wishes.  I like it how it is.  We bow to no one.  It doesn't have to be total agreement, otherwise nothing would ever get done.

I'm sure you would prefer a network where rules can't change without your explicit permission.  Anyone can see how that would appeal to your desire for absolute control.  It's just a pity you didn't realise that isn't how this system works.  If only you had done more research.    

What exactly do you think you're going to achieve here?  What do you think will be different next time?  Are you trying to guilt-trip everyone into enacting "scout's honour" going forwards?  Do you think all participants will naturally embody your absurd notions of playing nice?  

I cannot stop you from spreading FUD, and lies about Bitcoin and the Core Developers, but the community went into consensus to activate Segwit, miners followed. No one, in the end of the DRAMA, wanted to follow Gavin, Mike Hearn, Jeff Garzik. The community has spoken, the market has spoken, the miners have spoken through their actions.

I told you, I'm not wasting any further time explaining why you are wrong about SegWit activation.  There's no point.  For over three years you've been crying foul and for over three years not a single person has rallied to your lost cause.  And it's not like you'll ever understand, even if I explained it 1000 times.  Going forwards, I'm only interested in debating your utterly flawed concept of consensus.



Says you.  There are two fundamental flaws in your comprehension.  Activation and enforcement.  We'll start with the latter:

Clearly you have a problem with enforcement.  You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not in a position to enforce it.  People who are collaborating together, however, can enforce things.  If you work with people and build a network that is based on rules, the participants either follow the rules or they can be excluded from that system by the others.  Much like a society, but less restrictive.  Traditionally, if you break the law, you can be excluded from society in the form of imprisonment or, in some places, even death.  Thankfully, consensus mechanisms are not that draconian (so it's often baffling as to why you're such a whiny little crybaby about it).  Instead, you get to instantly form your own society if you disagree with our one.  The only downside is you don't get to take advantage of the existing infrastructure, the network effects or the security of the society you chose to leave.  You have to build that for yourself if you decide you can't work together with us.  The choice is yours.  And it's not a one-time deal either.  At any point you can re-join our network.  All you have to do is follow the rules (so stop pretending it's on par with a crime against humanity if someone did get forked off, you histrionic drama queen).  Our door is always open.

Now, onto activation.  Activation of a given feature (one that you happen to be totally obsessed with) is not the only occasion where the rules can change.  The "mandatory" part you keep moaning about wasn't even related to activation of the feature (also, you mean bit 6 and bit 8, but you keep saying bit 4, as if you somehow felt it necessary to further illustrate your lack of understanding).  You were so caught up in hating the feature, you mistook a totally different and unrelated change in consensus to be tied to activation of that feature.  But you still can't grasp that fact.  Consensus can change at any time, for any reason the majority deem appropriate.  The majority decide what the rules are.  Block by block.  The minority do get forked off if they don't follow the rules.  Again, if you want to take advantage of our security and our network effects, you follow our rules.  That is how the system you chose to be a part of functions.  

So, to ask the obvious question, why did you join this system if you are fundamentally opposed to how it works?  How misguided do you have to be to complain about an integral, crucial function that underpins the entire foundations of everything we've built?  It sounds as though you understand it so poorly that you believe it to be somehow immoral.  Even though it can't work any other way.  You do see how your position is completely untenable, right?  Logically, you can't take the stance that everyone has to agree when you can't eliminate free will.  What are you going to do?  Hold a gun to peoples' heads to make them agree?  How have you not thought this through to conclusion?  What are all these "scenarios" you run even for if they can't bring you to a rational conclusion?

Bottom line, if you can design a consensus mechanism that forces everyone to agree, feel free to publish it.  You can't stop other people from running incompatible code.  You can't stop me from deciding when someone else's code is incompatible.  You can't stop me choosing to disconnect or ban other nodes if they run code I don't approve of.  What you are proposing is quite literally impossible.  It could never exist.  Even if you were the most gifted programmer in the world, rather than the clueless, raving narcissist you are.  Accept the fact that you can't control people and move on.  Or cry harder.  Up to you.

And even if you had an answer to all of that (hint: you clearly don't), it has been explained to you on more than one occasion that if someone creates a Bitcoin fork and doesn't alter their new chain's network magic, this will result in replay attacks becoming possible.  Don't deflect from this issue as you've deflected every other time it has been raised.  Tell me, in no uncertain terms, how you would prevent replay attacks if a fork won't change it's network magic, since your glorious "everyone-has-to-agree-democracy" system won't allow disconnecting or banning nodes until you're personally satisfied that everyone is in agreement?  It appears that not only do you hate freedom, you also want to endanger the imaginary users of your imaginary totalitarian system.



That's not a "mindset".  That's actually the closest I've ever seen you come to finally understanding the basics.  

What group? “Core”? I believe the Core developers were neutral until the very last minute when some of them joined the grassroots movement that wanted the UASF. It was mutual consensus between different indivuduals/parties/groups.

Like Taproot, Core is neutral, but needs an aggressive call for LOT=true by the grasroots. Then Core can ignore, or join.

Just so you're not derailing yet another LN thread, replying to this here:


My loyalty is to freedom.  Yours is to fascism and thinking you can tell people what to do.  

I think consensus means those who choose to agree build a chain together.
You think it means "everyone has to agree because I say so".  Which not only sounds utterly childish, but is also demonstrably not the way in which Bitcoin works.  And each time you commit to that untenable position, you prove exactly why no one should ever take you seriously.  Please keep it up.

When I say "if you don't like it, you can fork off", I say it not as an instruction, but as a list of your available options.  It's merely a statement of fact.  If you want to run incompatible consensus rules, you don't have a choice in the matter.  That's just an explanation of how it works.  I don't get how you are still unable to comprehend that fact after all these years.  If you think you can run code that is not compatible and still remain connected to other nodes that deem your rules invalid, then you leave me no alternative but to question your intelligence.

Apologies, Lord Francis, we weren't aware you had decreed it had to be thus.   

I'm guessing if you had gotten the outcome you wanted, you wouldn't give the slightest toss who disagreed.  Worthless hypocrite.  You're clearly incapable of respecting consensus, yet you have the audacity to wade defiantly into this topic expecting people to care what your opinions are?  I suppose the balls must compensate for the total lack of brains.

There is hereby a failure of human language usage:  The word “consensus” is overloaded.

In Bitcoin, the word “consensus” has the very specific technical meaning.  It does not refer to an agreement amongst humans, as in colloquial usage.  Rather, it denotes the resolution of a synchronized state in a distributed system.

Compare and contrast other distributed consensus protocols such as Paxos (the Lamport consensus protocol, not the blockchain company).

In Bitcoin, the consensus means that all nodes arrive at the exact same conclusions about the current global state of the blockchain ledger:  The set of valid transactions that exist, the meaning of each of those transactions, and the order of those transactions.  It means that if Alice sends two transactions that attempt to spend the same coin, then every (honest) node in the world automagically agrees on the decision of which of the two transactions is valid, and which is invalid as a double-spend.  It means that if Mallory mines a block that violates consensus rules, all (honest) nodes file the block in /dev/null as if it never existed—regardless of the POW shown in its block header.  Etc...

The Bitcoin ledger is a single global truth.  Mutually untrusting nodes agree on this one truth, with no central authority to call the shots or enforce rules.  The only information available to each node is a bunch of blobs of data that the node receives from anonymous, potentially hostile parties.  And—the whole thing works!  It is so secure that the network can be trusted with a trillions of dollars worth of total value.

That is the meaning of the Nakamoto Consensus.

I already know.  I watched it happen in real time.  Right in front of my eyes.  We're all hoping that one day you learn, though.  Once the 80% lock-in threshold was achieved, the writing was on the wall and there wasn't much point resisting it anymore.  I know you're desperate for it to be a conspiracy and you're going to insist for the rest of forever that it was a conspiracy.  But it wasn't.  Even if nodes and miners were disappearing (and I'm still not convinced they were in the kinds of volume you're attempting to convince us they were), you still wouldn't be able to prove that they hadn't left voluntarily to join the BCH fork on 1st Aug 2017.  After all, why would anyone stick around on a network where they disagree with the ideology when they could just build upon that other blockchain instead?  (obviously you can't answer that one, because sadly you're still here on this chain for reasons I can't fathom)

Consider some actual evidence.  If you'd care to look up the historic BTC hashrate for May, June and July 2017, you'll see that the hashrate continued to climb throughout those three months.  No sudden large drops during July when BIP 91 locked in, so miners clearly weren't being forced off in droves as you so ridiculously claim.  It was only once the BCH fork launched on 1st August 2017 that there was a noticeable plummet in the hashrate.  Please present evidence to the contrary, assuming you have any.  Prove that miners were being forced off.  You can't.



Your interpretation of the data leaves much to be desired.  If it's so blatantly obvious that we're lying, please explain how it is that you're the only person who has arrived at this conclusion?  Where are all the people who believe your fantastical version of events?

//EDIT:  I'm weary of rehashing this over and over.  I'll continue any discussions about consensus in general, but I'm not wasting further time and effort on explaining SegWit activation.  It's history now and it's not going to change.

//DOUBLE-EDIT:
a) It certainly didn't occur before lock-in.
b) I'm still not convinced it happened at all.
c) Even if it did happen, Okay, Mr Almighty God-lord, ruler-of-all, whatever you say goes.  We'll just completely forget that freedom is a thing we're allowed to have.  

That's not how I recall history unfolding, unless your use of the word "enforced" was simply chosen in error.  "Pressured", perhaps, but "enforced", no.  The threat of a UASF was looming, but miners chose to "lock in" BIP 91 in July 2017.  

---

Uh-oh, even though they've had nearly four years to wrap their addled brain around the concept, some people are still unable to discern the difference between "bit 1" (signalling for BIP 141) and "bit 4" (signalling for BIP 91).  You can obsess over the percentage of bit 1 signalling for the rest of forever (and being the utter sadcase you are, I'm sure you will), but that's not the salient percentage in this conversation.



You're still conflating two separate issues.  What you're talking about began on 3rd August 2017.  AFTER BIP 91 LOCKED IN.  I don't know if your issue is literacy or just basic comprehension, but this has been explained to you before.  Several times.  Please take your Trump-esque "alternative facts" elsewhere, you dumpster-fire of a personality.

What's stopping people (like me) from making a PR to introduce their node with a domain as another DNS seed? One that has a very long uptime of course and is operated by someone who isn't rouge.

I agree, but address generation uses SHA-256 and checksum, so i doubt hash collision on RIPEMD-160 is enough to create same address from different key.


I doubt node from 2009 can even connect to Bitcoin network or other Bitcoin node.

That chart is saying exactly what I said.
SegWit activated through SegWit2x (aka NYA) when miners signaled for it using bit 4 an when the numbers reached more than 95% they also set their bit 1 (through BIP141 or SegWit) and signaled for both. Meanwhile UASF support remains close to 10%.

And you haven't been able to show us a single block that was rejected for not signalling SegWit before it was locked in to prove your claims. You keep playing with words.

No they weren't.

That's the definition but things didn't even get to that point since their deadline was never reached and not to mention that these nodes were the small minority.

First of all 2 competing blocks (or chains) is a chain split and has nothing to do with the fork being soft or hard.
Secondly there were no 2 "versions of blocks" back in 2017 unless you are counting the shitcoin forks such as BCH, BSV, BTG, BTX,... and 50 others as competing chains?

UASF nodes didn't ban other nodes, they rejected blocks. And the way I remember it their number was nowhere near 45%, I think you are confusing the hashrate signalling for SegWit with UASF nodes. Nodes signalling for BIP148 were barely 10% of the total nodes, the total was also no 10k it was closer to 200k.

Pure nonsense. The only time core nodes intentionally banned another node was the btc1 nodes which had nothing to do with UASF.

That's nonsense.
SegWit didn't activate by nodes it activated by miners when they reached more than 95% signalling and it was all because of the NYA also known as SegWit2x.

I disagree. "Opposition" didn't move to bcash, those who wanted to make some additional money did.

UASF has its usefulness but BIP148 is seriously flawed because it doesn't take miners into consideration at all.